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Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

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Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#121

Post by jacquesm »

hcnews wrote: post #67
antirez wrote: post #61

"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road." Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually…

As someone who writes software (haven't ever worked for Tesla), I think this statement does provide some credibility. It probably means that the visualization system does understand such scenes and is able to navigate it. Ofcourse, this statement by itself doesn't absolve Tesla's software of any error. It's important to know the actual root cause before saying who/what is wrong or not, something which the HN communit…

Appeal to authority ignored.

> It probably means that the visualization system does understand such scenes and is able to navigate it.

I think there is a pretty good counter example proving that it doesn't.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#122

Post by freehunter »

SteveCoast wrote: post #117
utopcell wrote: post #69

Why call something "auto-pilot" when it is clearly not remotely ready to do what its name implies ?

Unless someone has ever used an auto pilot in something like a Cessna, that person would probably have a wildly overoptimistic idea of what an autopilot does. Even on a passenger jet it's really not that smart, there's just lots more volume to explore so it's hard to kill everyone. A better analogy would be cruise control. It controls essentially one variable. As does lane keeping. You combine a couple of these thing…

There used to be the same problems with cruise control, though. People thought it would brake automatically and steer around corners, and would get into accidents that proved their assumption wrong.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#123

Post by Diederich »

zamalek wrote: post #106

My opinion: EVs, self-driving or directed, need an ejection mechanism for their batteries. Petrol has the advantage that it may ignite, where batteries are almost guaranteed to when damaged. Ideally, it would be an active system (launching the batteries no more than a meter away) - but that could fail under the conditions which caused the damage to the batteries. An alternative would be a passive system made of mater…

I'm not going to dismiss your opinion out of hand, though I certainly don't agree with it.

If I may: do you realize that, in this catastrophic wreck, that the fire only started, slowly, after the driver had been taken by EMS?

One big difference between a fire with batteries and gas is this: if gas starts to burn, most likely all of it is going to burn, quickly and often explosively.

None of these are the case with the batteries in Teslas. Only the damaged ones are likely to burn, slowly, and not explosively.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#124

Post by hcnews »

ironjunkie wrote: post #72
hcnews wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who writes software (haven't ever worked for Tesla), I think this statement does provide some credibility. It probably means that the visualization system does understand such scenes and is able to navigate it. Ofcourse, this statement by itself doesn't absolve Tesla's software of any error. It's important to know the actual root cause before saying who/what is wrong or not, something which the HN communit…

Serious question, but how does working for "FAANG" companies provides any credibility in this specific context? That must be like half the bay area. I get that it's written as a token of pride for you, but maybe worth to take a step back?

Fair enough, I added it in the flow of saying I don't work for Tesla. Removed it.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#125

Post by gowld »

segmondy wrote: post #19

One of the things you learn in flying is not to force it. If conditions are not safe. Just forget about it. It almost seems the same type of judgement needs to be made for auto-pilot. If your auto-pilot acts up at all. Just turn it off and don't use it till it's resolved. All you need is one incident to be dead, so if you get a chance to observe any abnormalities, consider it a blessing. Something that will also be g…

Whoa whoa whoa, "auto-pilot" is NOT self-driving. Tesla goes to great pains to make auto-pilot sound like self-driving while still stringently claiming that it requires constant supervision, like an airplane auto-pilot.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#126

Post by ggg9990 »

antirez wrote: post #61

"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road." Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually…

That person is likely Elon Musk who is well-known for his obstinate and even idiotic defense of Tesla against legitimate and thoughtful criticism. He has the defensiveness of Donald Trump, while even Zuckerberg admitted fault.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#127

Post by gowld »

JohnTClark wrote: post #34
MBCook wrote: post #2

If he had seen this issue multiple times before why would he keep using autopilot in that area? That seems like a very odd decision.

Maybe Tesla told him that the issue was fixed and he can use it again. Why do people trust auto pilot at such high speeds? It is still new technology. Let the autopilot park your car, if it makes a mistake the only bad thing that can happen is just a few scratches and in 5-10 years use autopilot on low traffic streets and then go to the highway. You can't expect new technology to be safe.

He took the car to the shop and Tesla said "Works for me, can't repro".

> Let the autopilot park your car, if it makes a mistake the only bad thing that can happen is just a few scratches

Or it can drive over a toddler or pin someone against a wall until they die.

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#128

Post by gowld »

wjp3 wrote: post #9

It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of the issue with the already-collapsed crash barrier and what CalTrans says about it. That sort of thing is there for a reason, and to be left in a crushed state for any period of time is bad.

i didn't understand that part of the article. Does the road have a crumple zone in it, and it was already consumed in a previous incident, and then in this incident the car collided with the already-crumpled zone?

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#129

Post by jijojv »

gowld wrote: post #125
segmondy wrote: post #19

One of the things you learn in flying is not to force it. If conditions are not safe. Just forget about it. It almost seems the same type of judgement needs to be made for auto-pilot. If your auto-pilot acts up at all. Just turn it off and don't use it till it's resolved. All you need is one incident to be dead, so if you get a chance to observe any abnormalities, consider it a blessing. Something that will also be g…

Whoa whoa whoa, "auto-pilot" is NOT self-driving. Tesla goes to great pains to make auto-pilot sound like self-driving while still stringently claiming that it requires constant supervision, like an airplane auto-pilot.

They scam people into buying Tesla thinking their version is close to self-driving right here https://www.tesla.com/autopilot . Reality is that since Oct'16 is that it's nothing more than a glorified adaptive cruise control found on many common cars.

Update: Since Oct'16 self-driving software is an add-on option and Musk has been tweeting[1] since Jan'17 that it's just months away and that its autopilot is somehow safer than adaptive cruise control. This Oct'16 video even starts with the claim that the driver is only there for legal reasons.

There is a lawsuit since Apr'17 regarding above - Google dean sheikh et al v. tesla, inc

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969 " Yes, safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present 23 Jan 2017"

3 months maybe, 6 months definitely 23 Jan 2017

Re: Tesla crash victim had complained about auto-pilot in same location

#130

Post by oldgradstudent »

antirez wrote: post #61

"Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015. ... There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road." Who wrote this statement does not understand software. If there is some kind of Heisenbug, those numbers are too small to prove that the software is ok, and actually…

They also provide numbers without any context. Is a crash every 85,000 times in that intersection means the Autopilot is safe or is it a death trap?

There are over 200,000 cars a day driving at that stretch of highway, if a car crashes there once a week, then the Tesla Autopilot is an order of magnitude more dangerous than a human driver.

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